The food trucks park in public, they have to adhere to normal regulations and are a far better method for many downtown areas.
Food trucks take up public parking spaces, and they are free to leave the area when an inspector shows up, avoiding any regulations that they don't feel like complying with. They pay no property taxes to support the infrastructure (like the parking space they use). They can show up for an hour a day, just to service the lunch hour crowd and then vanish when the customers do, having poached from fixed businesses enough to make a profit.
The brick and mortar (as opposed to tin and rubber) business has permanent employees, pays income and employment and property taxes, draws people to a downtown, and cannot easily flee to avoid whatever rules they don't want to comply with. The owner has risked his money and a large amount of his time building a business and depends on the customers, and is unable to simply park in a different lot a few blocks away if things don't go well, or to get away from a predatory roach wagon that is sucking his business away.
That they are a "far better method" is an unsupported opinion.
Why use up valuable real estate for a restaurant people will only be in for a few hours a day?
Why use up valuable real estate for a computer store that people will only be in for a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for an office that people will only be in a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for a house that people will be in only a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for a school that people will be in only a few hours a day? How does the time someone is in a building change anything?
Ride sharing seems fine to me, cars have to be inspected for a reason.
Not where I've lived. Yes, there are reasons some should be inspected, but they don't have to be.
No, it doesn't. The internet services have nothing to do with the connection to the PSTN (i.e., "telephone") where they are a common carrier. The information services are a (perhaps arbitrary) distinction because while the same smart phone accesses both, the destinations are different.
Any editorial control they have over non-telecom services is irrelevant.
Except if you actually read the court filings, you'd see that this is EXACTLY the relevant claim they make. Since they are not a common carrier for information services they have a first amendment right to control what those services carry.
For telecom, they most certainly do have common carrier status. Verifying that fact is really very easy.
Yes, and nobody has denied they are a common carrier for telephone services. Verifying the fact that they aren't common carrier for information services is just as easy, and since that is the relevant topic...
This is pretty awesome. One of the barriers of learning to code is getting passed the server setup.
No, people getting passed the server setup is how Google is allegedly helping the process, not putting up a barrier. They are passing people the server setup so that other people can get past the server setup stage... which isn't really that hard anyway these days.
All of my initial *unix skills came from wanting to do more with a webpage
Thank God there is nothing more to Unix than web pages.
Bah, you sissy. You use a magnet and tip the bits on the platter by hand!
What's "a platter"? Isn't that what cooked fish comes on?
Real programmers program the toggle switches by hand.
The mainframe computer at Michigan State University used to have a large bank of toggle switches which contained the bootloader code for the system. A CDC-6500. Hydraulically operated disk for swap. Vector CRT for console.
Can the smaller age variance make them more approachable?
I doubt the variance of the ages of "younger" professors has anything to do with it. Perhaps the smaller difference in age between student and teacher does.
This is one of those "d'oh" kinds of articles. Tenure was never intended to reward teaching, only research. Professors are judged on research, not teaching. Of COURSE teaching faculty will do a better job, in general, at teaching because that's what they are hired to do and what they are judged on. Especially at the freshman level courses that are done over and over again. And teaching faculty aren't distracted by worrying about their research.
That's not to say you cannot find excellent teachers in the ranks of the professors. You can find excellent teachers in any profession. They are excellent teachers not because of their position but despite it.
If your "security" system cost $8 like the one they hacked, you probably got what you paid for. I doubt that anyone is using this kind of thing to secure anything of importance.
This. You don't pay AU$8 for a security system to guard your Picassos or Tang dynasty Chinese vases. You pay AU$8 for a security system that does nothing more than make a noise when an unsuspecting person enters an area. It's not going to stop someone who is determined to steal from you.
This article is... on so many levels it is ridiculous.
This guy opens the remote and tells us that "you might be able to recognise a circuit that has 4 resistors, 2 capacitors, and 2 transistors". Yes, it would be a circuit with 4 resistors, 2 capacitors, and 2 transistors. I can build lots of circuits with two transistors that are NOT an oscillator. I mean "astable multivibrator". You really need to trace out the actual circuit before you can know what it is. Just counting bits won't tell you.
But, the picture of the top side of the remote shows three transistors, five resistors, and one capacitor. He's off by at least one for two of the kinds of parts, and we don't know what's on the back.
He goes on to build an Arduino to duplicate the action of the remote. In other words, a programmable microcontroller to generate a 38kHz square wave.
And THEN he spends $20 for a toy to do the same thing.
I don't know how much an Arduino costs these days, but he's now spent a considerable amount of money to duplicate the function of a device he can get online for $4 (there are two remotes in the package).
The people that this alarm system are intended to foil aren't going to case the site long enough to determine that an alarm is in use and that is it brand X with a remote that can be bypassed by spending $20 for an IR learning toy. They're going to walk into the area being protected and hear the alarm going off. If the owner is in the vicinity and hears it, he'll call the cops and the device has been successful. If he's not, well, it wasn't. I don't think many people are stupid enough to think that a noisemaker will stop someone who doesn't care if there is a noise. Like I said, nobody is relying on a AU$8 alarm to protect a Picasso. They might spend that much to get a notice when one of the kids is raiding the fridge, though. Or a 'coon is on the back porch. I doubt a 'coon has the skill to defeat this thing, although I don't know how smart Aussie 'coons are.
I'm fine with them getting their way... as long as they lose their common carrier status and become liable for all content passing across their network.
I think the point you missed is that they are already not a common carrier for non-telecommunications services and that's why they can claim first amendment rights to control what is said using their information service infrastructure. They can't lose a common carrier status that they don't have.
One wonders how they can get away, in any forum, by claiming "We invested in this, we need to make a profit" without literally being punched in the face.
Because 1) it is true that they invested in their infrastructure that is being used to carry the data, and 2) as a publicly traded company they do need to make a profit. And 3) punching the CEO of Verizon in the face wouldn't change either 1 or 2, and would result only in you going to jail, and most people are smart enough to know that and exercise self-restraint.
That said, they are making a profit. They're charging their users for the access. This is why the statement in the court filing that "And it takes network owners' property without
compensation by mandating that they turn over those networks for the occupation and use of others at a regulated rate of zero,..." is patent bullshit. The regulated rate is what they are charging those people who are "occupying" their service -- their users. If they don't want "others" occupying their bandwidth, don't sell them service. It's that simple. If they don't want to carry some website's traffic for free, then charge the user who is accessing the website for the traffic. Oh, wait. They already do that.
The only way some website would be using Verizon's network to transmit their data "at a regulated rate of zero" is if Verizon advertised their routes to the world and transported packets from one border to another and not to one of their customers.
If they are doing that, they need to stop.
Actually, the TSA is quite allowed to "keep records of you." That's how their "speedy security bypass" for elite travelers that can't be bothered with the same checks the hoi polloi must endure.
Which is a voluntary program. People have chosen to provide their data to TSA in exchange for elimination of some of the security theater. They've balanced the costs and benefits and come to the conclusion that they want to avoid -- the same security theater that you are condemning. You don't don't want to go through it, so why should they want to?
I'm pretty sure they do have our passports though right?
Not unless you give it to them yourself or are on in international flight. I used to use my passport for id all the time just to freak out the agents at the check-in counter (Why is this person showing me a passport for a domestic flight?) until I got tired of remembering to carry it. Other than that, my passport is irrelevant except when I travel out of the country.
Yet people freely bitch about the Post Office and public schools* âoelosing money.â
Post Office, yes. There is no reason the Post Office shouldn't be revenue neutral instead of a losing money proposition. They're providing a service for money.
But public schools? I've never heard such a complaint, and it would be ridiculous to make one. Public schools aren't selling a service, they're totally taxpayer funded and there is no expectation that the public schools are going to have in incoming revenue stream.
The real complaint is that the public schools are ineffective with the ever-increasing levels of money they are being given and that they are wasting it instead of using it to educate. Too many administrators, for one. Union contracts that mean dud teachers are assigned to an empty room (with full pay) to protect the students because they can't be fired for being incompetent. Handing out free iPods and laptops to third graders instead of focusing on core competencies.
But "losing money"? No, that's not what the complaints are.
May I suggest you consider re-reading GGP's post. Your reading comprehension of it is broken,
I don't know who "GGP" is, but I read Koookiemonster's post. His argument against using git is based on a hypothetical stereotypical computer illiterate mother. In response to a claim that it was easy, he asked about the poster's mother.
That implies that the people who would be using git in KM's company have the computer skills of a mother. Since the programmers would be the ones using it, that doesn't bode well for their skills.
Now we're approaching an era when being mean-spirited towards people based on their incompetence or their ignorance is socially unacceptable.
I think we've been in an era for a long time where it is inappropriate to wish others dead simply because they design computer hardware in a way that you don't like. Designing embedded computers in a way that is appropriate for embedded computers but not desktop systems is neither ignorant nor incompetent, per se. To paraphrase so many of the posters here regarding RdRand, "if you don't like that hardware, don't use it."
Your desire to classify this as simply "being mean spirited" is the era we do not want to approach. Refraining from wishing others dead "in painful ways" is hardly political correctness, especially when the reason you want them dead is a disagreement over a CPU design. It's called basic human decency, and it will, I hope, never disappear no matter how much you'd like it to.
How about sneaker-net using autonomous driverless cars? The latency would suck, but the bandwidth of a driverless stationwagon filled with 9-track^H^H^H^H^HDVD-ROMs would be huge.
Having to manually tell the OS where everything is was tolerable in the 90s,
You've never come across a broken kernel that tries to identify the IPMI hardware on your motherboard, fails, and ignores any and all boot-time kernel flags that try to tell it what is really there. And thus sits idle during boot for ten minutes while trying to poke a register that isn't there and doesn't get a response.
I'd much rather be able to tell the kernel what to look for and where than have it twiddle it's toes for ten minutes each time it is rebooted.
Let's imagine your mother has received a PDF document in her email, and she has to add it to the repo.
If your programming staff have the computer skills of the stereotypical mother that you are using as your example, then your company is in much worse trouble than just not having a good source control system.
And if it's a kid running out into the road, too bad for it too?
This is where a human can make better value judgements than a computer. Is what just ran into the road a large dog or a small child? Different answers can mean different reactions.
Last I checked it was the car behind's responsibility to keep a sufficient distance to avoid a collision, they're never going to win in court that it was your fault for braking too hard.
There has been a series of public service spots running on US TV for a while now dealing with drunk driving. One shows a woman being rolled into a hospital with a gaggle of medical people trying to keep her alive. The husband/driver of the car she was in is following behind with a cop accompanying him. "Oh no, oh my, oh this is terrible, I was just a little buzzed..." he says. The gurney stops, the doctor in charge turns to him and asks "just a little buzzed? Why didn't you say so?" The medical people all step back, the woman on the gurney pops up magically healed and says "ok, let's go home then."
"Can't win in a court of law" doesn't fix the injuries the driver of the car that is rear ended suffered.
So yeah, bad for the people who are glued to your bumper I guess but I won't miss them too much.
Interesting new research just in shows that when two cars collide, sometimes people who aren't responsible for the collision are injured, too. Sometimes they even die from those injuries. "Better dead than red" was an old saying. I think the defensive driving advocates have a similar saying.
You haven't given a reason why that should be prohibited but "third-party incrimination" (i.e. requiring answers from third-party witnesses) should not be.
Because without incrimination there can be no "third-party incrimination." What the third party is testifying to cannot be used to incriminate him. If it could, then the fifth amendment applies.
Look up the word "immunity". It's granted to "third parties" whose testimony might incriminate themselves but the information is important enough to waive those charges.
But this is the entire question: Why is it an "abuse of government power" for the government to make the defendant answer questions, but not for the government to require third-party witnesses to answer questions?
Because the government is not seeking to punish the third party witness and is seeking to punish the defendant. The "innocent until proven guilty" concept plays a part here -- there is no "until proven guilty" connected to the witness.
It isn't a case of corrupt or incompetent courts. It doesn't have to be a case of rigging a trial. If I'm a prosecutor and I have enough evidence to convict you, and I can demand that you testify, I'll call you as witness number one. If you tell the truth and admit guilt, my case is done and you've saved me a lot of time and effort. If you lie and claim innocence, I'll present the same case I was going to in the first place and tack on perjury charges.
You know that, so if you're on trial and I call you, you can 1) give up and confess, guilty or not, 2) lie and get the extra time for perjury when I do get a conviction, or 3) bet that my case isn't that strong and lie, hoping I can't actually convict you. You might notice that this 3rd option is just like a plea bargain, but it carries the extra penalty of even more jail time if you lie and get caught, compared to refusing a deal and getting prosecuted. It's like handing a bigger hammer to the prosecutor if you allow him to force a defendant to testify. The hammer they have is already big enough (go to trial and spend a lot of money and time and maybe get convicted anyway at full sentence, or confess and get a reduced sentence). Turning that into "go to trial and get a full sentence for the crime AND a sentence tacked on for perjury, or confess and get the full sentence for the crime" (if there was going to be a plea, it would have already happened), under threat of option 3 "refuse to answer and go to jail for that, too", is an abuse of power.
It's also opening a door for a cross examination. If a defendant doesn't testify at all, you can't cross him and get him to slip up in telling his story. And if I can force you to testify, I can ask you more than "did you commit crime X", I can ask you about events leading up to the crime that maybe I can't prove but would convince the jury that you are guilty. "Did you have a serious argument with the victim prior..."? You now have to consider "can he prove I did?" before you lie, and if you lose that bet you get perjury charges even if I can't prove the whole crime.
What's an argument from first principles as to why you can't require answers from the defendant (who at least might be guilty),
Very simple. It's the prosecutor's job to prove guilt, not the defendant's job to prove innocence. That's the perfect world explanation.
but you can require answers from third-party witnesses (who are known to be innocent)?
If they are known to be innocent then there is nothing to punish them for. What they say cannot be used to put them in jail.
it's easy to claim you just came out of Walmart and somebody must have done it while you were in there. There's no way they can prove it's not true...)
You picked the wrong target. Walmart is one the most camerad places on earth. Loss prevention. They'll have the tapes that show your car was not approached by anyone but you, and since they'll want to keep cooperation with the cops for their loss prevention programs they'll be happy to cooperate with the cops for copies of the tape.
Slashdot Mirror
The food trucks park in public, they have to adhere to normal regulations and are a far better method for many downtown areas.
Food trucks take up public parking spaces, and they are free to leave the area when an inspector shows up, avoiding any regulations that they don't feel like complying with. They pay no property taxes to support the infrastructure (like the parking space they use). They can show up for an hour a day, just to service the lunch hour crowd and then vanish when the customers do, having poached from fixed businesses enough to make a profit.
The brick and mortar (as opposed to tin and rubber) business has permanent employees, pays income and employment and property taxes, draws people to a downtown, and cannot easily flee to avoid whatever rules they don't want to comply with. The owner has risked his money and a large amount of his time building a business and depends on the customers, and is unable to simply park in a different lot a few blocks away if things don't go well, or to get away from a predatory roach wagon that is sucking his business away.
That they are a "far better method" is an unsupported opinion.
Why use up valuable real estate for a restaurant people will only be in for a few hours a day?
Why use up valuable real estate for a computer store that people will only be in for a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for an office that people will only be in a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for a house that people will be in only a few hours a day? Why use up valuable real estate for a school that people will be in only a few hours a day? How does the time someone is in a building change anything?
Ride sharing seems fine to me, cars have to be inspected for a reason.
Not where I've lived. Yes, there are reasons some should be inspected, but they don't have to be.
This relates to their telecommunications network.
No, it doesn't. The internet services have nothing to do with the connection to the PSTN (i.e., "telephone") where they are a common carrier. The information services are a (perhaps arbitrary) distinction because while the same smart phone accesses both, the destinations are different.
Any editorial control they have over non-telecom services is irrelevant.
Except if you actually read the court filings, you'd see that this is EXACTLY the relevant claim they make. Since they are not a common carrier for information services they have a first amendment right to control what those services carry.
For telecom, they most certainly do have common carrier status. Verifying that fact is really very easy.
Yes, and nobody has denied they are a common carrier for telephone services. Verifying the fact that they aren't common carrier for information services is just as easy, and since that is the relevant topic ...
This is pretty awesome. One of the barriers of learning to code is getting passed the server setup.
No, people getting passed the server setup is how Google is allegedly helping the process, not putting up a barrier. They are passing people the server setup so that other people can get past the server setup stage... which isn't really that hard anyway these days.
All of my initial *unix skills came from wanting to do more with a webpage
Thank God there is nothing more to Unix than web pages.
Bah, you sissy. You use a magnet and tip the bits on the platter by hand!
What's "a platter"? Isn't that what cooked fish comes on?
Real programmers program the toggle switches by hand.
The mainframe computer at Michigan State University used to have a large bank of toggle switches which contained the bootloader code for the system. A CDC-6500. Hydraulically operated disk for swap. Vector CRT for console.
Can the smaller age variance make them more approachable?
I doubt the variance of the ages of "younger" professors has anything to do with it. Perhaps the smaller difference in age between student and teacher does.
This is one of those "d'oh" kinds of articles. Tenure was never intended to reward teaching, only research. Professors are judged on research, not teaching. Of COURSE teaching faculty will do a better job, in general, at teaching because that's what they are hired to do and what they are judged on. Especially at the freshman level courses that are done over and over again. And teaching faculty aren't distracted by worrying about their research.
That's not to say you cannot find excellent teachers in the ranks of the professors. You can find excellent teachers in any profession. They are excellent teachers not because of their position but despite it.
So, d'oh.
If your "security" system cost $8 like the one they hacked, you probably got what you paid for. I doubt that anyone is using this kind of thing to secure anything of importance.
This. You don't pay AU$8 for a security system to guard your Picassos or Tang dynasty Chinese vases. You pay AU$8 for a security system that does nothing more than make a noise when an unsuspecting person enters an area. It's not going to stop someone who is determined to steal from you.
This article is ... on so many levels it is ridiculous.
I don't know how much an Arduino costs these days, but he's now spent a considerable amount of money to duplicate the function of a device he can get online for $4 (there are two remotes in the package).
The people that this alarm system are intended to foil aren't going to case the site long enough to determine that an alarm is in use and that is it brand X with a remote that can be bypassed by spending $20 for an IR learning toy. They're going to walk into the area being protected and hear the alarm going off. If the owner is in the vicinity and hears it, he'll call the cops and the device has been successful. If he's not, well, it wasn't. I don't think many people are stupid enough to think that a noisemaker will stop someone who doesn't care if there is a noise. Like I said, nobody is relying on a AU$8 alarm to protect a Picasso. They might spend that much to get a notice when one of the kids is raiding the fridge, though. Or a 'coon is on the back porch. I doubt a 'coon has the skill to defeat this thing, although I don't know how smart Aussie 'coons are.
I'm fine with them getting their way ... as long as they lose their common carrier status and become liable for all content passing across their network.
I think the point you missed is that they are already not a common carrier for non-telecommunications services and that's why they can claim first amendment rights to control what is said using their information service infrastructure. They can't lose a common carrier status that they don't have.
One wonders how they can get away, in any forum, by claiming "We invested in this, we need to make a profit" without literally being punched in the face.
Because 1) it is true that they invested in their infrastructure that is being used to carry the data, and 2) as a publicly traded company they do need to make a profit. And 3) punching the CEO of Verizon in the face wouldn't change either 1 or 2, and would result only in you going to jail, and most people are smart enough to know that and exercise self-restraint.
That said, they are making a profit. They're charging their users for the access. This is why the statement in the court filing that "And it takes network owners' property without compensation by mandating that they turn over those networks for the occupation and use of others at a regulated rate of zero, ..." is patent bullshit. The regulated rate is what they are charging those people who are "occupying" their service -- their users. If they don't want "others" occupying their bandwidth, don't sell them service. It's that simple. If they don't want to carry some website's traffic for free, then charge the user who is accessing the website for the traffic. Oh, wait. They already do that.
The only way some website would be using Verizon's network to transmit their data "at a regulated rate of zero" is if Verizon advertised their routes to the world and transported packets from one border to another and not to one of their customers. If they are doing that, they need to stop.
You can create an ISP cooperative and bring fiber to your neighborhood.
I tried that. I didn't get more than 10 feet out of my driveway and the fiber broke.
It's HARD to distribute wireless internet over a fiber optic cable.
Actually, the TSA is quite allowed to "keep records of you." That's how their "speedy security bypass" for elite travelers that can't be bothered with the same checks the hoi polloi must endure.
Which is a voluntary program. People have chosen to provide their data to TSA in exchange for elimination of some of the security theater. They've balanced the costs and benefits and come to the conclusion that they want to avoid -- the same security theater that you are condemning. You don't don't want to go through it, so why should they want to?
I'm pretty sure they do have our passports though right?
Not unless you give it to them yourself or are on in international flight. I used to use my passport for id all the time just to freak out the agents at the check-in counter (Why is this person showing me a passport for a domestic flight?) until I got tired of remembering to carry it. Other than that, my passport is irrelevant except when I travel out of the country.
Yet people freely bitch about the Post Office and public schools* âoelosing money.â
Post Office, yes. There is no reason the Post Office shouldn't be revenue neutral instead of a losing money proposition. They're providing a service for money.
But public schools? I've never heard such a complaint, and it would be ridiculous to make one. Public schools aren't selling a service, they're totally taxpayer funded and there is no expectation that the public schools are going to have in incoming revenue stream.
The real complaint is that the public schools are ineffective with the ever-increasing levels of money they are being given and that they are wasting it instead of using it to educate. Too many administrators, for one. Union contracts that mean dud teachers are assigned to an empty room (with full pay) to protect the students because they can't be fired for being incompetent. Handing out free iPods and laptops to third graders instead of focusing on core competencies.
But "losing money"? No, that's not what the complaints are.
Any guesses whether the controller for the SSD had an ARM processor with hidden busses involved?
May I suggest you consider re-reading GGP's post. Your reading comprehension of it is broken,
I don't know who "GGP" is, but I read Koookiemonster's post. His argument against using git is based on a hypothetical stereotypical computer illiterate mother. In response to a claim that it was easy, he asked about the poster's mother.
That implies that the people who would be using git in KM's company have the computer skills of a mother. Since the programmers would be the ones using it, that doesn't bode well for their skills.
Now we're approaching an era when being mean-spirited towards people based on their incompetence or their ignorance is socially unacceptable.
I think we've been in an era for a long time where it is inappropriate to wish others dead simply because they design computer hardware in a way that you don't like. Designing embedded computers in a way that is appropriate for embedded computers but not desktop systems is neither ignorant nor incompetent, per se. To paraphrase so many of the posters here regarding RdRand, "if you don't like that hardware, don't use it."
Your desire to classify this as simply "being mean spirited" is the era we do not want to approach. Refraining from wishing others dead "in painful ways" is hardly political correctness, especially when the reason you want them dead is a disagreement over a CPU design. It's called basic human decency, and it will, I hope, never disappear no matter how much you'd like it to.
So that's how we suggest you do it.
How about sneaker-net using autonomous driverless cars? The latency would suck, but the bandwidth of a driverless stationwagon filled with 9-track^H^H^H^H^HDVD-ROMs would be huge.
Having to manually tell the OS where everything is was tolerable in the 90s,
You've never come across a broken kernel that tries to identify the IPMI hardware on your motherboard, fails, and ignores any and all boot-time kernel flags that try to tell it what is really there. And thus sits idle during boot for ten minutes while trying to poke a register that isn't there and doesn't get a response.
I'd much rather be able to tell the kernel what to look for and where than have it twiddle it's toes for ten minutes each time it is rebooted.
Let's imagine your mother has received a PDF document in her email, and she has to add it to the repo.
If your programming staff have the computer skills of the stereotypical mother that you are using as your example, then your company is in much worse trouble than just not having a good source control system.
Where do priests, counselors, doctors, lawyers, and reporters fit in?
Oooh, oooh, I know this one. "In a duffel bag, if you fold them enough times."
And if it's a kid running out into the road, too bad for it too?
This is where a human can make better value judgements than a computer. Is what just ran into the road a large dog or a small child? Different answers can mean different reactions.
Last I checked it was the car behind's responsibility to keep a sufficient distance to avoid a collision, they're never going to win in court that it was your fault for braking too hard.
There has been a series of public service spots running on US TV for a while now dealing with drunk driving. One shows a woman being rolled into a hospital with a gaggle of medical people trying to keep her alive. The husband/driver of the car she was in is following behind with a cop accompanying him. "Oh no, oh my, oh this is terrible, I was just a little buzzed..." he says. The gurney stops, the doctor in charge turns to him and asks "just a little buzzed? Why didn't you say so?" The medical people all step back, the woman on the gurney pops up magically healed and says "ok, let's go home then."
"Can't win in a court of law" doesn't fix the injuries the driver of the car that is rear ended suffered.
So yeah, bad for the people who are glued to your bumper I guess but I won't miss them too much.
Interesting new research just in shows that when two cars collide, sometimes people who aren't responsible for the collision are injured, too. Sometimes they even die from those injuries. "Better dead than red" was an old saying. I think the defensive driving advocates have a similar saying.
Tits isn't a bad word, sounds like a snack?
I wonder if the tufted titmouse is a native inhabitant of the Grand Teton mountains? Merde! It makes my head explode.
You haven't given a reason why that should be prohibited but "third-party incrimination" (i.e. requiring answers from third-party witnesses) should not be.
Because without incrimination there can be no "third-party incrimination." What the third party is testifying to cannot be used to incriminate him. If it could, then the fifth amendment applies.
Look up the word "immunity". It's granted to "third parties" whose testimony might incriminate themselves but the information is important enough to waive those charges.
But this is the entire question: Why is it an "abuse of government power" for the government to make the defendant answer questions, but not for the government to require third-party witnesses to answer questions?
Because the government is not seeking to punish the third party witness and is seeking to punish the defendant. The "innocent until proven guilty" concept plays a part here -- there is no "until proven guilty" connected to the witness.
It isn't a case of corrupt or incompetent courts. It doesn't have to be a case of rigging a trial. If I'm a prosecutor and I have enough evidence to convict you, and I can demand that you testify, I'll call you as witness number one. If you tell the truth and admit guilt, my case is done and you've saved me a lot of time and effort. If you lie and claim innocence, I'll present the same case I was going to in the first place and tack on perjury charges.
You know that, so if you're on trial and I call you, you can 1) give up and confess, guilty or not, 2) lie and get the extra time for perjury when I do get a conviction, or 3) bet that my case isn't that strong and lie, hoping I can't actually convict you. You might notice that this 3rd option is just like a plea bargain, but it carries the extra penalty of even more jail time if you lie and get caught, compared to refusing a deal and getting prosecuted. It's like handing a bigger hammer to the prosecutor if you allow him to force a defendant to testify. The hammer they have is already big enough (go to trial and spend a lot of money and time and maybe get convicted anyway at full sentence, or confess and get a reduced sentence). Turning that into "go to trial and get a full sentence for the crime AND a sentence tacked on for perjury, or confess and get the full sentence for the crime" (if there was going to be a plea, it would have already happened), under threat of option 3 "refuse to answer and go to jail for that, too", is an abuse of power.
It's also opening a door for a cross examination. If a defendant doesn't testify at all, you can't cross him and get him to slip up in telling his story. And if I can force you to testify, I can ask you more than "did you commit crime X", I can ask you about events leading up to the crime that maybe I can't prove but would convince the jury that you are guilty. "Did you have a serious argument with the victim prior..."? You now have to consider "can he prove I did?" before you lie, and if you lose that bet you get perjury charges even if I can't prove the whole crime.
What's an argument from first principles as to why you can't require answers from the defendant (who at least might be guilty),
Very simple. It's the prosecutor's job to prove guilt, not the defendant's job to prove innocence. That's the perfect world explanation.
but you can require answers from third-party witnesses (who are known to be innocent)?
If they are known to be innocent then there is nothing to punish them for. What they say cannot be used to put them in jail.
it's easy to claim you just came out of Walmart and somebody must have done it while you were in there. There's no way they can prove it's not true...)
You picked the wrong target. Walmart is one the most camerad places on earth. Loss prevention. They'll have the tapes that show your car was not approached by anyone but you, and since they'll want to keep cooperation with the cops for their loss prevention programs they'll be happy to cooperate with the cops for copies of the tape.
Kindle Readers and DRM aside for a moment, this combination of automated Legos and stop motion photography may require some exploration...
It's not "stop motion photography". It's a simple snapshot. It's trivial to automate, and the hardware is also very simple.